Saturday, November 07, 2009

The Alcoa plant in Lebanon, Va., that makes forged aluminum car wheels, was poised to take off in 2010, with contracts that were expected to provide work for years.

Instead, the plant will close and the remaining 76 workers will lose their jobs. The Pittsburgh-based company announced it will close the plant in January and move all of the production work to the company’s Cleveland, Ohio, facility.

There had been as many as 300 workers at the local Alcoa plant, which opened in 1997. The company blamed market conditions on the closure. [link]

I'm shocked that this appears on the front page of today's New York Times. But there it is:

Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%
By David Leonhardt, New York Times

For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession — until now.

With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.

In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time. [link]

As the Democrats move towards passage of a comprehensive bill to change the weather ...

But then he was a true-believer in global warming, so the symptoms were there all along:

Australian PM warns 'skeptics' could derail climate talks
Space Daily

Powerful climate change skeptics were "holding the world to ransom", Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Friday as he warned of fear campaigns designed to derail global talks.

Rudd said naysayers were active in every country as the world approached the United Nations' climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

"They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests," he said.

Rudd said it was difficult to move towards a global agreement in the face of those who denied climate change was caused by human activity, those who refused to act on the evidence, or who wanted other countries to act first.

"As we approach Copenhagen, these three groups of climate skeptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom," he told policy think-tank the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

"Provoking fear campaigns in every country they can; blocking or delaying domestic legislation in every country they can; with the objective of slowing and if possible destroying the momentum towards a global deal on climate change," he said. [link]

"Literally holding the world to ransom"? Someone should hand the esteemed prime minister of Australia a dictionary and have him look up the word "literally."

But to the point:

What in God's name is this fool babbling about? You'd think crazed thugs were holding guns to innocent legislators' heads. (Most climate skeptics not being Muslim, there's little chance of that).

It's called "debate," pal. The arena of ideas. Seeking out and disseminating the truth.

Yes, the motive is to stop stupid politicians from doing stupid things that will bring harm to us all.

Or don't. It'll just get in the way of Obama's narrative that the mainstream press is more than willing to trumpet. It goes like this: Bush is gone. The economy is doing much better. Congratulations are in order. You may thank me now.

In a Reuters story that focuses on the possible motives behind the mass slaughter on the Ft. Hood Army base Thursday (like the gunman screaming, "Allah akbar!" wasn't clue enough), "reporter" Chris Blatimore just had to get these shots in (pardon the pun):

The United States has been engaged in six years of fighting in Iraq and nearly eight years of war in Afghanistan, which has put extra stress on the military and on individual soldiers.

Multiple shooting incidents are not uncommon in the United States, where there are relatively lax gun controls.

The fact that the Muslim gunman had never served a day in a combat zone (must have been the stress of dealing with psychiatric patients 9 to 5 every day in that stressful office environment in Texas) and the fact that multiple shootings are, contrary to what the liberal reporter wants to believe, quite uncommon here in the U.S., he just had to squeeze his personal opinions into this rambling piece (again, it was supposed to be about motive).

Are there any qualifications required to be a Reuters reporter? One wonders.

The mother who brought down the Fort Hood killer
Chris Ayres, Times of London

A police officer and mother of one was hailed a heroine yesterday after it emerged that she almost single handedly ended the massacre at America’s biggest military base.

Kimberly Munley does not look as if she would be much of a match for a heavily armed US soldier on a murderous rampage. But the slightly built 34-year-old civilian officer was first on the scene after Major Nidal Malik Hasan began firing on comrades at Ford Hood in Texas as they prepared to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. The 39-year-old psychologist killed 13 and left 31 others with serious injuries. [link]

Read the whole thing.

I can only fault Ms. Munley for not putting a fifth round into the Muslim fanatic, who lives.

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years. [link]

The Democrats will send you to prison if you choose to not be insured.

A tip o’ the hat to CNN for gamely trying to spin one of the most gruesome polls for ObamaCare that we’ve seen this year — so far. Opposition to The One’s plan is now a clear majority, up seven points since September; the number of Americans who want Congress to either make major changes to the bill, start over on the bill, or scrap the entire effort stands at a combined 72 percent; and the number who say Obama isn’t doing enough to work with Republicans now equals the number who say he is.